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Sale Day Strategies: Role of social media in Flipkart & Amazon India's festive bonanza

We take a look at the various sale day strategies deployed by Flipkart and Amazon India to convert leads for their annual sales.

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Jagruti Verma
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Sale day strategies

With a strong focus on clothing and electronic goods, Flipkart and Amazon India leveraged celebrity endorsements and user-generated content to convert leads for The Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festival respectively. We take a look at their sale day strategies.

With COVID-19 making it difficult for people to step out to shop for months on end, there is a pent-up desire to buy new things, which is expected to drive consumer buying behaviour this festive season. Accordingly, there are two key categories that are likely to see a rise in sales: Clothing and Electronics. These trends can be observed in the sale day strategies of some e-commerce platforms as well as malls this year.

While Flipkart went flying on celebrity endorsements for The Big Billion Days (October 16 to 21), Amazon India's Great Indian Festival (October 17 onwards) concentrated on the idea of upgrading homes and lives during the festive season. We take a deeper look at how they used social media to drive engagement and convert leads.

Flipkart Sale Day Strategies

Celebrity faces are a big part of Flipkart's presence on social media. Some of the names include Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachchan, and Virat Kohli. Even when Flipkart promotes partner brands, celebrities associated with those brands can be seen in the communication prominently. This trend followed through for this year's The Big Billion Days sale promotions.

Behind the Scenes

When the sale was on, this year too Flipkart took a behind the scenes approach in a part of their content, giving people a slice of what it takes to prepare for a sale of this magnitude. This included shining a light on their warehouse as well as people who were responsible for assisting in customer service, expressing the brand's humane aspect.

Flash Sales

Though most of the content on Instagram and Facebook was such that it would stay on for days and months to come, on Twitter, things were quick-moving for Flipkart. They posted several flash sale links during the sale days, directing people to specific categories and brands.

Prepping With Creators

To promote the sale during the early days, Flipkart roped in Kenny Sebastian and three social media influencers (Juhi Godambe, Dhananjay Bhosale, and Karan Dua) for Samsung-sponsored sessions around fashion, technology, and food.

The Celebrity Connect

In sync with the consistent theme of Flipkart on social media, celebrities were a big part of this year's sale day strategies as well. They were featured in various visual assets, prompting potential customers to check out the sale, listing various offers and benefits of doing so.

Leveraging Interface

Leveraging Instagram interface to create videos that pop out on the screen as a great way to grab someone's attention during a scroll has been consistent for many brands. The effect, of course, grows manifold when you have a celebrity being featured in such posts.

Destination for Books

Though Flipkart concentrated on technology and clothing/accessory category, for the most part, books also got a fair bit of attention in their social media strategy where they put a spotlight on some best-selling authors and their books under #BBDSpecials.

Season Of Cricket

With IPL going on, it would be tough for a brand to not take it into account for a sale. Flipkart was no different. They leveraged the topical love for cricket via brand ambassadors of various partner brands. These included AB de Villiers, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli.

Tugging at Emotions

Flipkart tugged at the emotions of potential customers in two key ways: Communicating about smaller vendor partners and the opportunities they were getting because of the sale and Flipkart's offerings for children.

Extra Benefits

Apart from the bigger sale on the platform, Flipkart released several nuggets of discounts and special offers on social media and their app. This helped them drive engagement on various platforms as well as prompt potential customers into making a purchase.

Facebook Lives

Facebook was leveraged by Flipkart for their Live feature. The platform proved to be useful for Lives could be scheduled as well as saved later. These Live sessions gave Flipkart a chance to dwell into a deeper, slightly longer storytelling formats such as that of broadcast news and interviews, to showcase stories that deserved more attention.

Expressing Gratitude

To close the sale, Flipkart put up a creative featuring a humble Amitabh Bachchan, thanking the people of India for their support.

View this post on Instagram

Thank you India! ??

A post shared by Flipkart (@flipkart) on

Also Read: Decoding: Role of YouTube in e-commerce brands’ marketing funnel

Amazon India Sale Day Strategies

For the Great Indian Festival, Amazon India concentrated on the quintessential habit of Indian households upgrading their space during the festive season. Their sale day strategies were clubbed under a theme of how this festive season, Amazon India is opening up a golden gate for them. Through this gate, they can enter a world they desire, the path to which lies through the sale.

Driving Engagement

To drive engagement on social media, Amazon India conducted several activities. Each was incentivised with a prize or a discount voucher. These included a smartphone search across platforms, word search and one where people were asked to post when they see an Amazon ad.

Promotions & Teasers

Multiple video assets were released by Amazon India to promote the Great Indian Festival. Two key themes used in these narratives were: People shop as and for families during the festive season and that the happiness (goods) from across India will be delivered by Amazon to doorsteps.

Leveraging Interface

Amazon India put up quite a few posts on Instagram and Facebook where the interface of the app was a key element in the post. Such posts tend to pop on the screen and nudge people to stop to have a look. Amazon used these to talk about various offerings and discount offers.

Creators & Influencers

Instead of directly roping in influencers to talk about the sale, Amazon concentrated on pushing the content being created by and for its partner brands. This helped them get the reach of influencers as well as promote key brands for the sale.

Expert Opinion

Since mobile phones were a key part of Amazon's festive offerings, expert advice naturally became a key part of their sale day strategies. The reason stems from how a purchase such as this is looked at as an investment and one where people tend to do a lot of research. Amazon roped in NDTV Gadget's Rajiv Makhni to drive such conversations, making it easy for people to learn about the products they could potentially buy.

Special for Members

Amazon India's sale was open for Prime Members a day ahead of the schedule. This aspect was extensively promoted by them across social media. They were trying to drive prime memberships as well as app installs, a day before the main sale would go live through good old VIP access curiosity.

Encouraging UGC Content

Understanding the importance of micro-influencers, Amazon India created a contest where people could make videos of them selling a key offering, product or brand, to share on social media. To drive participation for the same, Sidharth Malhotra, Krystle D'Souza and Arjun Bijlani were roped in as jury members. They were responsible for promoting the contest and picking the winners. The three of them also created reaction videos while watching the best entries.

Season of Cricket

In partnership with Star Sports India, Amazon created a small show featuring Neha Dhupia and several others. It was a light-hearted show where the participants shared their memorable shopping experiences.

Regional Pride

A part of the Great Indian Sale was The Great Indian Bazaar, where Amazon shared several creatives, highlighting the specialities of the different states and regions of India. It helped not only showcase their offerings but also strengthen their reach among small retail sellers and vendors, expressing how they could be a good partner for selling goods.

View this post on Instagram

Open your Door to Happiness this festive season when you visit Uttarakhand virtually on the Amazon Great Indian Bazaar. Famed for their simple and honest lifestyle, the culture reflects a sincere bond with god and nature. Revolving around its traditional ethics, moral values, the simplicity of nature and a rich mythology, Uttarakhand's deep rooted collection of art forms define its humility. Get festive ready with beautiful Aipan paintings, intricate wood craft figurines and stone carving home decor when you shop from the Great Indian Bazaar this #AmazonGreatIndianFestival. This #AmazonGreatIndianFestival explore Uttarakhand from the ease of your fingertips on the #AmazonGreatIndianBazaar

A post shared by Amazon India (@amazondotin) on

Festive & Prime Upgrades

While a part of the Great Indian Sale is over, Amazon India has extended the narrative with Happiness Upgrade Days. No end date has been announced for the initiative and its likely that it will go on for a few more weeks. They are not going strong on leveraging Amazon Prime offerings and characters to promote the sale on Twitter.

Sale Day Strategies

Some of the key aspects of the Sale Day Strategies deployed by both Flipkart and Amazon included:

  • A special focus on clothing and technology categories could be seen in their sale day strategies, especially festive wear and mobile phones.
  • Roping in celebrity and influencers to tailor communication for social media users.
  • Concentrating efforts on driving memberships and app installs.
  • Both brands included cricket in their respective sale day strategies.
  • In different ways, they tailored strategies according to the platforms, with quick communication being rolled out on Twitter, Live sessions being conducted on Facebook and focussed use of interface being displayed on Instagram.
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